Many of today's liquid laundry detergent compositions are formulated to deliver superior removal of grease, soils, and other stains. However, many customers still prefer to use specialist pretreat compositions, even though liquid laundry detergent compositions are often formulated for pretreating stains.
A big cause for this customer behaviour is that dosing devices, typically sold with liquid laundry detergent compositions, are less than satisfactory for use in pretreating, except for on light and non-greasy stains. They are often also not intuitive to use, with many customers not even being aware that they can be used for effectively pretreating stains.
As a result, customers often either do not pretreat, or prefer to buy specialist pretreaters for removing stains, particularly for tough stains such as grease, ink, lipstick, and the like. This is regardless of the fact that many current liquid laundry detergent compositions contain surfactants, enzymes, soil release polymers and other stain removing actives. In addition, such liquid laundry detergent compositions are more effective in removing stains when applied neat, since the concentration of actives on the stain is much greater. Therefore, encouraging customers to pretreat results in better stain removal, and hence in customers being more satisfied with their liquid laundry detergent composition.
Therefore, a need remains for a pretreating device, wherein the customer is intuitively guided to use the pretreatment device for pretreating stains with a liquid laundry detergent composition. U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,209 discloses a closure for a liquid laundry detergent container having an integrated brush, U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,298 discloses a dispenser with an integrated scrubbing surface and pretreat nozzle, U.S. Pat. No. 4,767,034 discloses a cap to a spray bottle having an integrated scrubber. U.S. Pat. No. 6,874,190 discloses a hand-held container for washing laundry. U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,630 discloses a cap having a pouring spout. GB 2 168 931 discloses a cap having an applicator.